Software-defined networking (“SDN”) is an architectural framework for creating intelligent networks that are programmable, application aware, and more open. SDN provides an agile and cost-effective communications platform for handling the dramatic increase in data traffic on carrier networks by providing a high degree of scalability, security, and flexibility. SDN provides several benefits. SDN can allow for the creation of multiple virtual network control planes on common hardware. SDN can help extend service virtualization and software control into many existing network elements. SDN enables applications to request and manipulate services provided by the network and to allow the network to expose network states back to the applications. SDN exposes network capabilities through application programming interfaces (“APIs”), making the control of network equipment remotely accessible and modifiable via third-party software clients using open protocols such as OpenFlow, available from Open Network Forum (“ONF”).
User-defined, on-demand cloud services and user digital experience expectations are driving planning and deployment of network functional virtualization and service-centric SDN among global telecommunications service providers. Network Virtualization Platforms (“NVPs”) are deployed in information technology (“IT”) data centers, network central offices, and other network points of presence (“POPs”) to accelerate deployment of on-demand user service and virtualized network functions. An NVP is a shared virtualized infrastructure that supports multiple services and network applications (including real-time and non-real-time applications).
Combining SDN and NVP functionality, such as in Domain 2.0, available from AT&T, provides a highly complex and dynamic set of relationships between virtual, logical, and physical resources. Autonomous controls and real-time service path steering, workload, creation, distribution, and destruction are inherent Domain 2.0 capabilities, but currently no unified and holistic method exists for human operators to understand, model, and design service paths and to understand and control the operations of the environment. Currently available solutions are dominated by tools and techniques developed to support traditional information technology and network domains, which, in comparison, are relatively simple and static, and are therefore ill-suited to Domain 2.0 and similar environments. The new dimensions of Domain 2.0 and similar environments require a new dimension of human insight and control.